


Hope You Guess My Name

by blak_cat



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-13
Updated: 2015-10-13
Packaged: 2018-04-26 06:48:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4994356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blak_cat/pseuds/blak_cat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look into the events of season 2 from the eyes hiding behind Perry's...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hope You Guess My Name

_I was around when Jesus Christ had his moment of doubt and pain, made damn sure that Pilate washed his hands and sealed his fate, pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name, but what's puzzling you is the nature of my game..._

\--

 

You made a split second decision and you were lucky you landed where you did. Things would be a lot more unfortunate if you found yourself inside the body of a fraternity brother or one of the sisters wielding bows and arrows. You found yourself inside a quickly surrendering mind. Laura Hollis had put up a fight when you were inside her head, kicking and screaming and making a _fuss_. All to be forgotten the second you released her. 

This one was close to Laura Hollis. Even more beneficial. 

You endured the first week in the human body with what grace you could. You often let the girl have control, laughing at how she casually brushed off her moments of black out when you had the reigns. You preferred to observe in those first few days, and you knew everything she knew. And so you endured a great deal of pity for the young journalist’s heartbreak. 

The Floor Don brought her food often, insisting she eat and every time she looked pale and ashen and you counted it a victory. You thought you might mourn your favorite child more, as you did during her sojourn in the dirt beneath Austria, but watching your enemy crumble away piece by piece was a worthy consolation prize. 

“Laura, you need to eat more,” said the biology major. 

Also in the room was the tall one. Danny Lawrence. This one radiated protective energy and never took her eyes off of Hollis. There were feelings there, the recesses of the Floor Don’s mind told you. One-way feelings as Laura’s mind was clouded over with thoughts of Mircalla and guilt. 

“I’m fine, I had some tomato soup,” she said from her bed. 

“I don’t want to pull the bio major card, but you need more than a cup of soup every 24 hours,” they said. 

“Carmilla wouldn’t want you wasting away,” you venture. It was your first time speaking with her voice and all eyes turned to you. 

You could see in her face that you’d dug in a knife just as you hoped. A reminder that Mircalla had gone where she could never reach her, disguised as a moment of comfort. You were practically giddy. 

“Perr’s right.” 

This would be easier than it looked. 

\----

You saw the body of your daughter in her arms before Laura Hollis did. 

And you felt something twitch inside you. _She’s alive_. You hated the way it made you feel something you recognized as the long forgotten emotion of hope. You also hated how much it reminded you that you missed her, even in the short week she’d been reinterred into the earth. So you let the Floor Don take over when you realized what was happening because you didn’t know what you might do if you watched your daughter come back to life before your eyes. 

When you came to again you were in the Floor Don’s room, Lawrence was with you and a cursory glance at her thoughts told you she’d been comforting her. Still warm hot chocolate was sitting in front of you both and she must have been in the middle of a sentence because Lawrence was looking at her expectantly. 

“Sorry,” you mumbled and shake your head. “What was a I saying?” 

“Well I feel like you were about to go into some ‘other fish in the sea’ spiel but I’m not really sure I want to hear it.” 

Well thank god for that because you don’t have the energy or gag reflex to affectively talk the shining white knight out of the chip on her shoulder. 

“I get it, you know? She’s—she’s in love with Carmilla and that’s okay—“

“Good. Fantastic, dear. You’ll be on your way then.” 

Lawrence’s eyebrows furrowed and her eyes looked between you and the hot cocoa as you pulled it from her hands and set it down. You took to shuffling her out through monosyllable protests and shut the door behind her, locking it, and sighing. It would take some getting used to, piloting this body, but nothing you couldn’t handle. 

Lawrence though. There was something interesting in her poorly hidden affections for Laura Hollis. You could see it in this mind, all the longing looks this week that Hollis had missed, all the things Lawrence had done that had gone unnoticed. Everyone seemed to want to think she was being kind and helping a friend, and perhaps she was, but you’d been around humans for thousands of years. You knew them better than they knew themselves. There was a jealous animal in there somewhere, secretly ecstatic at the possibility of Mircalla’s permanent absence. Something that looked into a future where Hollis was over her heartbreak and saw them holding hands, together at last. 

_That_ could be useful. With Carmilla alive again, Lawrence seemed to be admitting to herself those feelings, acknowledging the only world in which she and Laura Hollis would be together is a world in which Mircalla does not exist. You could use that knowledge.

Then the rumbles started again. 

More fool your daughter that she missed her target and angered a god. Her misunderstanding saved her life this time, had she killed the beast the sword would have eaten her whole and you admonished for years for not paying close enough attention when you spoke. All those weekly dinner dates weren’t for nothing, but perhaps that saved her life as well and whether you were grateful or irked was not clear. 

Your rebellious daughter. Whose throat you were going to rip out. And whose death you desperately would mourn. 

“Perr! We gotta go, now!” said a voice from the hall. 

The scientist burst through the door. LaFontaine, though parts of this mind still saw this face and registered it as Susan. A fascinating phenomenon filled with drama to be sure and many elephants in the room. The world was on the edge of a knife, ready to slip and fall, and these two seemed in a stalemate of names and identities. How petty. 

“What do you mean?” you said, standing up and pretending to flatten out the creases in your sweater. 

“The fish isn’t dead and these earthquakes are going to bury the campus if they keep up like this, we’re headed out,” they said while quickly grabbing clothes and random objects and plunging them into a bag. 

“We?” 

“Laura and Carmilla. We’re just going to hit the road and not look back, try and find a town or something.” 

Well that seemed ill conceived and exactly the type of thing Laura Hollis would suggest. 

“Do we have provisions? It’s December,” you said. 

“Perr, just get that level 9 emergency kit you shoved under your bed at the beginning of the semester.” 

Right, of course. 

\----

Hiking through the wilderness of Steiermark was as awful as it seemed in your head. Especially with the moppet updating social media every few hours of your excursion and making heart eyes eyes at Mircalla the whole time. They seemed to be in some strange tension filled limbo and you had little doubt they’d finally put everyone out of their misery before you left and sealed their fate with a kiss and a promise. You try not to gag. And now it’s even worse because they’re jumping every time their hands accidently brush or are caught looking at each other. Part of you wants to remind Mircalla she’s nearly 400 years old and should simply take what she wants. But you’re not an advocate for this relationship and would rather watch them both burn on a stake. But right now you’re the one who would rather burn on a stake than watch this. 

It’s even worse at night when you break off into your respective tents (at which time you generally let the Floor Don have the reigns again so you didn’t have to listen to the biology major chatter away). You can tell from the tension during the day that nothing happens between them despite the golden opportunity of the privacy of their own tent, and that leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Mircalla was not hesitant and certainly not kind, yet for this teenager she’d resign herself to lying quietly, patiently waiting. She’d been defanged in a matter of months. 

And you watched her keep her instincts at bay. Once she would have torn through all of them at once and drank herself into a coma. But now she shutters in the corner of the fire, pale and droopy-eyed, sneaking off to guzzle what she could from wild animals and stomaching the taste. 

None of this was worse than the first time you saw them together. 

After she’d torn the diner owner to pieces and you all decided to settle in for the night she’d leaned back in the booth, legs stretched out across the seat. And curled into her, nestled into her chest, was Laura Hollis. She was already sleeping soundly when you spotted Mircalla running her fingers lightly through the dirty blonde hair and sent soft smiles in her direction. 

You rolled your eyes and tried not to throw up. At some point shortly after that the two of them made their little affair “official” and you did everything in your power to keep their lips and hands apart, sending the biology major in when you heard them get too quiet, doing your best to never leave them alone. It frustrated Mircalla to no end as you saw her fume every time. 

“Listen, as soon as we find a place with multiple bedrooms—and really thick walls—you two can do whatever you want,” the biology major said.

“Well, within reason of course,” you said in your best mock of the Floor Don with a pout. 

“Okay, can you please stop talking,” Laura said with a cringe to the pair of you and you smiled sweetly while LaFontaine snickered and Mircalla looked ready to commit murder.

\---

It was, however, like Mircalla knew exactly how to get back at you without even trying. 

When you found yourselves dragged back to the campus and Laura Hollis broke down in the snow you were annoyed at the unnecessary excursion but vowed to gift that kobold with whatever riches he asked for if you ever saw him again. This you could work with.

The campus was in a bit of disarray. Half of it was sunken or sinking and you heard the moans from the fish from the pit. It was black in the night, like a sky clouded over and hiding its stars, but the roars and wails were unmistakable and almost made you feel bad for the creature and how much pain it must be in, how much anger and embarrassment it must be feeling. 

Mircalla lifted Hollis onto her piggyback, sniffling and was mumbling something while she was too busy wiping her nose on the sleeve of her jacket and apologizing. You and the scientist followed and you recognized the familiar walk, flanked by trees. The sidewalk was well cared for and the grass beneath the snow you knew was well manicured. Had you your own senses back you might even be able to smell the mahogany and gold leaf from here. 

In the moonlight, your old manse shone and Mircalla muttered some lie about finding it on an old orientation campus map. But when the stonework and Tudor beams and brick came into startling clarity the closer you got, the more you smiled beneath the Floor Don’s own mouth. 

Home sweet home. 

That is, when Mircalla wasn’t mercilessly defiling it. They took your old bedroom and you pulled your lips into a tight line, hoping you could hold yourself back from slapping your daughter in front of all of them. And at night you passed by the room constantly to make sure she hadn’t yet committed the greatest offense she could. It was coming though. 

“What the hell?” LaFontaine said while the two of you sat in your chosen room, talking to the bookworm in the computer. 

You heard it too, scuffling and crashing and giggling as Laura Hollis bounded past your room and up the second flight of stairs towards the solarium. Almost imperceptibly, Mircalla followed. 

“It was Laura and Carmilla,” you said. “Horse play or something.” 

“Yeah, I’m _sure_ that’s what that is,” they said with an eyeroll. 

You kept your eyes on the ceiling off and on for hours. Occasionally you heard footsteps from the solarium in the first few minutes until everything got quiet up there and you went back to pretending to be interested in the laundry experiment set up on the floor of the bedroom. 

“Feeling better?” they asked while you folded the clothes, bloodstains far more faded. 

“Yes,” you said. 

And late into the night, after they fell asleep and the USB was unplugged, you took a turn about the house, spying a light on in your—Mircalla’s—bedroom. You lingered outside just long enough to hear sighs belonging to Laura Hollis and something grossly akin to a moan from your own daughter. 

To say they were fucking in your bed would be a kinder sentiment than what they were actually doing. They were _making love_ in your bed. On purpose, from Mircalla’s point of view. And it took quite a bit of patience not to tear the door. How long had Mircalla been waiting to do this? To actually let herself be vulnerable, admit in the biggest way that someone other than you owned her, all in the presence of your own room, your own place of sanctuary. 

You turned on your heel and stalked off with balled fists and a tightly set jaw. You let the Floor Don have her brain back for the next few hours, hoping to wash the rage-inducing mental images from your mind and quietly plot all the ways that Mircalla had no idea what was coming for her. 

\----

Getting Laura Hollis to stay had been easy. She was a complete sucker for “freedom of the press” and “freedom of speech” and to find her precious truth speaking kin murdered was enough to trigger the guilt switch in her head when you quietly let Perry add “this is our fault.” 

However, things were complicated when Mattie returned. You’d forgotten, in all honesty, that the terms of her position required her to assume control of the school in your absence. And, darling as your firstborn was, you needed her out of the way and, more importantly, away from Mircalla where her protective wing hovered endlessly. 

Matska knew the danger of killing the fish and pushing a campaign for it now would be far trickier. She'd block your chances, all with the power of the charter now resting in her in your departure. Damn you for providing her the exact tools she needed to out gun you. But she could never, in 1,200 years, out maneuver you. Somewhere below, in the depths of the library and vaulted away in this house, was the document holding all her power. You couldn't break it yet. You didn't have the grip yet you needed. 

Besides, the First Gate wanted the Rook. 

It was also around this time that Perry seemed to begin to relent to you, unknowing as it was. Your memories slowly started to bleed into hers, even when you were dormant in her head. Once or twice, while she was on the verge of sleep, you thought she might have even tried to talk to you, like she knew you were there. 

“What do you think of this Belmonde lady?” LaFontaine asked over a game of checkers one night. 

“I think she seems a little vile,” you said, pushing the curly tangles back behind your ear. You really needed to start wearing headbands and hair ties. 

“Harsh?” 

They furrowed their brows in your direction as they moved their red piece. This game was for children and f not for your careful constraint, it would have been over in seconds. The dumb man’s chess, quite literally. You even gave them a few free pieces and still, if you truly wanted it, you could slaughter them in a few short moves. 

“She’s an incursion,” you said. 

“Big word. You feeling okay?” 

“I just think the way she stepped in here and took over everything was a little—abrasive, and rude.” 

LaFontaine laughed and shook their head as they made another idiot move on the checkers board you ignored. The topic changed but you lingered on your irritation at Matska and her hawk eye on Mircalla.

And in Miss Perry’s waking hours she began to feel it too, without realizing the root of her paranoia and irritation, but she grew a hatred for Matska and a distrust. Sometimes she thought things you wondered were really your thoughts that she was surrendering to. Or perhaps she was scared and all she knew from the hours you spent seething was that Matska was the danger. 

Mistrust and danger aside, there was trouble in paradise and you were practically gleeful. Laura didn’t see it, but Mircalla was restless in the corners she made her home during the day, distracted and long in the face (more than usual). And when the shining white knight returned you saw her glares, the way she stepped forward to remind Laura she was there, that _she_ was the girlfriend all the while Laura was obvious. And every time she used that dirty, dirty word _hero_ you could practically feel Mircalla’s skin ripple with discomfort. 

And when it all blew up you wanted to throw a party and pat Mircalla on the back and sing in her ear about how much you knew this would happen. 

Stone cannot love flesh. 

And Laura Hollis knew this, and deluded herself into thinking it was flesh she was loving too. That Mircalla could be anything close to what she was. But she bled on the stone while it cracked under her heat and they’d gone to lick their respective wounds alone. 

Though Mircalla’s response when she came back was a little nightmarish and reminded you of how she was in the 70s, obsessed with rock n roll, dying her hair all sorts of colors, and staying out for weeks at a time at clubs and bars. 

The lines between where Perry is ushering Laura to bed and where you are cleaning up her leftover cookie crumbs become a bit more blurred. You wonder which of you is feeling the sympathy there and which of you is jumping for joy and relishing in pouring cold water on Mircalla to wake her. 

But this was all useful, annoyances aside. Vordenberg, the idiot, was just dangerous enough to Carmilla—Mircalla—that it got Laura’s eye’s trained back on her again. There was something you could use there. You knew where the charter lay hiding, buzzing with wait, and while cultivating a distrust for Mattie was easy, Laura’s surprise decision to out her and put Vordenberg in charge did throw a wrench into your plans. A man with a shining past as a slayer of devils was a much steeper hill to climb. 

But he put a nail in his own coffin the day he threatened Carmilla that first time. You saw a flicker of it then, in Laura’s eyes, and wondered what it would take to pull that fire out of her and let it loose. She would protect Carmilla if she could. 

Then she was dragged back into the house, bloody, and half-awake on the shoulder of Mattie. 

You and LaFontaine and the nosey bookworm now shoved inside the body of your dead son. Carmilla’s heart was only barely unscathed from the arrow, but her chest and skin and muscle was torn and bleeding all over the carpet and she swayed on the spot, forcing her eyes open only to lose that battle. 

“Hello chest trauma,” LaFontaine said, picking at the shirt and exposing the gruesome and dark wound.

The part of you that is Perry flinches and cringes. You see in this, golden opportunity. 

Perry fights this. She wants to throw them back into to the wild, anything to get Matska out, even at the expense of Carmilla. But Laura disagrees, her eyes rarely leaving Carmilla’s thrashing body in the other room, moaning as the intruder in her chest was forcibly removed. 

“Are you sure about this?” Perry asked as you, Laura, and Mattie carefully lowered Carmilla down into the trapdoor into J.P.’s waiting arms. 

“Yes, I’m not going to leave them to fend for themselves,” she said, her grip was the last to leave Carmilla. 

“You mean you don’t want to leave Carmilla on her own,” Perry accused and you watched. 

Laura shot her a briefly dangerous look before it turned guilty and she turned around to hide, perhaps, the threat of tears. Fascinating. She still cared after all then. And hope wasn’t lost, too bad the arrow hadn’t killed Carmilla. Laura may have agreed to anything in that moment. 

But this was useful. 

Though there were some hiccups when Perry located some holy water and went a little too ambitious with it. But it did get Carmilla and Laura talking. And evidently you’re the only one keeping tabs on the content of those videos because you watch Laura like a vicious hawk and know that she knows Matska's secret now. 

She won’t kill Mattie. You know she won’t. She won’t kill anything. But you need to find someone else who might. And Laura Hollis delivers her to you on a silver platter.

\---

You knew Danny Lawrence would come in handy all those months ago. And Laura was so confused in her world of antiheroes and amorality that of course she would go running to her symbol of heroism and righteousness. And of course Danny Lawrence was still hopeless putty in her hands, unable to stop seeing a possible world where Laura looked at her with lovestruck eyes. 

“She’s got us all headed out there, risking our lives to save some vampire,” you said, crossing your arms as the door behind J.P. closed. “Who would think less about killing all of us than we would about squishing a spider.”

Bait offered. 

“Oh come on, Laura’s just being Laura. Trying to do her best for everyone,” she said. 

Bait received. 

“I know,” you said. “But she never really seems to understand that these are vampires and not just some undertanned scenesters with problematic diets. You have to figure it’s only a matter of time until…” 

“Until?” 

Danny Lawrence to F3. 

“Until she takes the wrong risk.” 

Black queen eyes the white knight on F3

“And I’m just hoping that someone is there to help her when she does.” 

“Always.” 

Black takes white knight on F3. And the knight doesn’t even know it. All it will take now is a little push. 

So after you knock Mattie out, you hunt down the girls meant to be waiting for their fearless and noble leader. And then you rip their throats out one at a time and walk away licking your fingers and telling Perry she better get used to the taste of blood. You hover nearby and watch Lawrence arrive and scream. And the cogs in her head turn themselves. 

\---

Matska dies, just like you wanted. 

Though Carmilla’s rampage was a little unexpected, it works in your favor to keep them apart. To let Carmilla’s anger fester at Laura and let Laura’s broken heart ooze everywhere just long enough to kick her into gear. 

It’s the perfect combination: heartache and the desire to save. 

Even Perry agrees. 

\---

In the end, it all works out. You very strategically find the charter and place it in Laura’s hands because the baron has Carmilla on her knees and seconds from the end of her very long life. You knew he’d drag her here, that he would want to punish Laura too. Laura, the living insult to his great great great grandfather’s love for Countess Mircalla, would watch her paramour die. 

You pulled out the charter, your trump card you’d let hide in the basement for months. If there was ever a moment to try and let that beast inside Laura loose, this was it. There was a murdered hiding in there somewhere. And the only way to pull it out was on its knees right in front of them. 

"He's going to kill Carmilla, can you really let that happen?" 

All of it rested in her hands and you watched as flashes a life where Carmilla was headless and gone darkened her eyes. That fire was back, and crackling. She stood up and you could almost sense all the muscles in her arms and legs twitching and vibrating on adrenaline and fear. You envied Carmilla her ability to listen to that thunderous heart and imagine all the blood pumping in an effort to keep something precious alive. 

“That’s not what a heroine does, not in the world that you want to live in,” the baron said. 

But you know something he doesn’t. You know something Laura doesn’t. You know something Carmilla doesn’t. 

Laura is in love. 

And just as you thought, she chooses instead to live in a world where she is a murderer but Carmilla is alive. 

It fascinates you, more than anything else. Carmilla defies everything about the world that Laura loves. In fact she destroys, piece by piece and Laura lets her. She lets Carmilla dismantle her just as Carmilla allows her to pull out her teeth and cut her hair and make her a willing servant. Perhaps the myth about the sun and moon chasing each other was true. Laura Hollis loved a monster and an 18 year old girl who wore the same face, spoke the same words, committed the same sins, and loved the same girl. 

And in the end you’re sitting alone in the living room. Your fish god is dead, the baron took care of that for you, just as you hoped his phobia of the supernatural would. The board is eradicated thanks to the baron’s lust for revenge and power for the sake of an outdated family name. Carmilla no longer has Mattie to protect her, Laura Hollis is broken, and you have the house all to yourself. 

Lilith won this round yet again. 

It didn't occur to you then, but perhaps you misstepped just a little, at the very end. Perhaps there was a pawn you missed on your way out, something waiting on the far side of the board that you saw but didn't heed. You handed Laura Hollis tools that day, you revealed to her exactly how much she wanted Carmilla in her life and all that she was willing to do to keep her alive. You broke her down, but never bothered to wonder what she'd do if she managed to build herself back up. 

Perhaps you'd drove a nail in your own coffin as well. Or maybe she was a silly 19 year old after all.

In the end it was always Lilith, it was always Lilith, it was always...

**Author's Note:**

> So things I wanted to do here: 1) explain my theory that Lilita did not plan everything out but was simply good at reacting, 2) point out that giving Laura that much power and self-reflection at the end just might be her downfall one day, and 3) continue to push the point that Lilita is 100% Lilith, don't know how that is? google it. Also this may have all just been an excuse to use Sympathy for the Devil in conjunction with Lilita. Who can say? 
> 
> Song used in title/prologue: Sympathy for the Devil by The Rolling Stones


End file.
